


Intimate

by storypaint (possibilityleft)



Category: L Word
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/pseuds/storypaint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six times characters on The L Word actually wore bras.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intimate

**1\. in training**

When Shane was eleven, she wore what her foster mom called "training bras," little strips of fabric with flowers and bumblebees. Shane didn't get to argue, and she certainly didn't get to pick them out, not after she asked for ones with "skulls on them. Or maybe cars? Something interesting."

By the time she'd turned fifteen she didn't wear them anymore. Her body had never bloomed like her classmates' bodies did. There was no point.

She did learn pretty early on how to take them off someone else, though (Laci Nimble, eighth grade, first kiss and the best damn set of breasts Shane had even seen).

"Wear a bra! What are you, a lesbian?" her foster mother said. She pulled the rosary beads through her fingers, faster and faster, as though they'd disappear, her lips fluttering.

Shane just sulked. She was gone from that house not long after. The streets were almost better than this.

 **2\. butch girl**

She had small breasts that she hid behind men's suits in the 1980s, trying to establish herself in the art world. She wore loafers and tied her hair up and in the men's room the guys called her that "butch girl" who wanted to take their jobs.

By the 1990s, she found her place in art and in her heart and she was out, out everywhere-- to her father, to her workplace, to her friends. Some of the old friends were gone, but there were new ones-- most importantly Tina, the center of everything.

She worked hard for Tina and she wore fitted suits and she stopped wearing bras very much, a little act of rebellion that helped her through the day, remembering Tina's lips like a promise on her flesh.

Years passed like this, in Tina's arms (and out again for a while, but not for long, she couldn't stand it). She wore a bra that was too small to her father's funeral, feeling the press of the hooks in her back and concentrating on the pain there so she wouldn't cry then in front of everyone.

"It's okay," Tina murmured in her ear when they were leaving, and she started bawling.

 **3\. small victory**

Tina started going through bras like mad when she got pregnant. Every adjusting size was, to her, a victory. She was going to _show_ her pregnancy, and her breasts were huge and heavy.

And tender. And sensitive. That's something Helena Peabody knew-- that she was sensitive right now, just like Winnie had been, but she tried not to think about Winnie anymore.

Helena felt almost triumphant when she woke up next to Tina, Tina with the beautiful full pregnant breasts, bare in the morning's sun.

 _This is a sight that Bette Porter won't soon see again,_ she thought, the schadenfreude delicious. Art or children? It was a wonder Bette had kept her woman as long as she did.

It was a sight that Helena wouldn't soon see again, either, but the sunlight tucked that possibility away for now, and the children burst in.

 **4\. sweet and real**

She wore a bra when she played tennis. Her old (stupid) manager told her that she would otherwise be a distraction, and it was the one bit of useful advice she had retained from his services ( _That bastard_ ).

She wore a bra and her breasts were pert and high and Alice stared when she came into the Planet after a long workout. She couldn't help it. There was something very sweet and real about the breaths making their way through her chest.

She could feel her heart beat faster in response, and she tried to stop it, to let it go, because there was _Tanya_ , and she was just Alice, Dana's best friend.

She was glad that Dana didn't notice when she sometimes stared.

 **5\. another phase**

Alice was always rebellious, her mother sighed, and it was all just a phase.

Alice hated her. She was stupid and she didn't understand.

So the burning-of-the-bras thing? It was just a phase. And several years too late to go with the times. Lenore sighed and waved a hand. Of course Alice was her daughter. They shared the need for drama. Alice screamed and slammed her bedroom door. She didn't come out for two days.

When she did come out, she looked worn. She bought a bra and she wore it to school. She spent time with her boyfriend. She went to college. She was normal.

Lenore was almost disappointed. Then Alice came home one night and said, "I'm bisexual, Mom. I have a girlfriend."

Lenore shrugged. Another phase. Alice would grow out of it. It was just a phase.

Alice didn't scream this time. She didn't slam the door or storm off or accuse. She cried.

Lenore held her and promised to accept her, her hand on Alice's back, against the bumpy strap of her bra. She ran her hand across it, thoughtfully, wondering what it was like to enjoy this, to take one of them off someone else.

She spent half a moment wondering if she was a bad mom, and then she let the thought go and finally let Alice be.

 **6\. lingerie**

Marina took Jenny shopping. "I cannot deal with your Kmart lingerie," she said in that lovely lilting voice. "A woman should dress as beautiful as she feels."

Jenny couldn't resist that voice, not then, and she let Marina dress her up like a mannequin in lace and silk and softness. They had sex in the dressing room at Victoria's Secret, as quietly as they could, Marina's hand under her bra (the tags were still on) and then down her pants. Jenny bit her lip when she came and Marina smiled.

"I think this one will work," she said, her voice a promise, and Jenny bought it, her face still flushed.

She threw it in the bottom of her drawer when Marina left, and didn't find it again until she was sneaking around in her own house like a stranger, trying to find some clothes while Tim was at work. She wanted to leave it there in the drawer, couldn't stand the thought of some other woman (or man she supposed) stripping it from her with the delicacy of Marina.

But she took it out anyway, because she was Jenny, a glutton for punishment, like too many writers were, and she lifted it to her nose and inhaled, imagining a scent no longer there.

She couldn't make herself wear it again, but she kept it in the bottom of her drawer for years-- a reminder, a promise, a mistake, underwear unworn.


End file.
